Raja Yoga (the Yoga Sūtras with commentary) — trans. Swami Vivekananda (1896)

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YOGA PHILOSOPHY

LECTURES

DELIVERED IN NEW YORK, WINTER OF 1895-6
BY THE

swAmi vivekAnanda

ON

rAja yoga

OR CONQUERING THE INTERNAL NATURE

ALSO PATANJALl's YOGA APHORISMS, WITH COMMENTARIES.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
LONDON. NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY.

All rights reserved.

IN MEMORIAM

MARY J L MCDONALD

o

Each soul is potentially divine.

The goal is to manifest this divinity within,

BY controlling NATURE, EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL.

Do this EITHER BY WORK, OR WORSHIP, OK psychic control, or philosophy, by one, or more, or all of these and be free.

This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or texmples, or forms, are but secondary details. .■•...

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PREFACE

Since the dawn of history, various extraordinary phenomena have been recorded as happening amongst human beings. Witnesses are not wanting in modern times to attest to the fact of such events, even in societies living under the full blaze of modern science. The vast mass of such evidence is unreliable, as coming from ignorant, superstitious, or fraudulent persons. In manyinstances the so-called miracles are imitations. But what do they imitate ? It is not the sign of a candid and scientific mind to throw overboard anything without proper investigation. Surface scientists, unable to explain the various extraordinary mental phenomena, strive to ignore their very existence. They are, therefore, more culpable than those who think that their prayers are answered by a being, or beings, above the clouds, or than those who believe that their petitions will make such being's change the course of the universe. The viii PREFACE.

latter have the excuse of ignorance, or at least of a false system of education in their childhood, which has taught them to depend upon such beings for help, and this dependence has now become a part of their degenerate nature. The former ha\"e no such excuse.

For thousands of years such phenomena have been investigated, studied, and generalised, the whole ground of the religious faculties of man has been analysed, and the practical result is the science of Raja Yoga. Raja Yoga does not, after the unpardonable manner of some modern scientists, deny the existence of facts which are very difficult to explain ; on the other hand, it gently, yet in no uncertain terms, tells the superstitious tliat miracles and answers to prayers, and powers of faith, though true as facts, are not rendered comprehensible through the superstitious explanation of attributing them to the agency of a being, or beings, above the clouds. It declares to mankind that each being is only a conduit for the infinite ocean of knowledge and power that lies behind. It teaches that desires and wants are in man, that the power of supply is also in man ; and that wherever and whenever a desire, a want, a prayer, has been fulfilled, it was out of this infinite magazine that the supply came, and not from any supernatural being. Tiie

PREFACE.

IX